Seen the crazies go nuts in the past when other companies got rid of dongles. Lots of unfounded fears that everyone will suddenly be facing tons of competition from the kid down the street that copies the software from dad's work or whatever. Fears that a small production boutique with two seats of Software-X will suddenly have 20 seats of the same software and will magically hire enough competent people to use it, while charging lower rates. The latter isn't going to happen and the kid down the street who swaps torrents with everyone he knows, already has more professional software on his gaming rig than most of us even know exists. In the world of warez (pirated software), having the latest and greatest expensive software, especially having it first, is a huge status symbol. Knowing anything about what it does or how to use it, is not required. The software is all about bragging rights and bargaining chips. In the end, what most of the kids are after these days are music, mobile apps, porn and console/PC games -- and usually in that order.
The majority of software out there now does not use dongles. I would say that of the apps using dongles in 2001, of the ones that still exist, less than half of those still use dongles today. It's a good trend, but a slow and gradual progression. I have a lot more "expensive" apps on my workstations now than I did back then, but also the software is a lot cheaper as a whole. And rarely more than 3 or 4 dongles per system. 12 years ago, it wasn't uncommon to have a chain of 5 or 6 parallel-port dongles, in addition to 2 or 3 USB keys, just for my plugins that my other dongle-protected software used. It was insane.
Originally Posted by Mike 'Fireman' Ross
